Booktype

28.09.2015

Julian Sorge

Julian Sorge is our Managing Director, Booktype GmbH. He grew up in Rome and Bonn. Julian studied Philosophy and Cultural Sciences in Munich and Bremen and has been living in Berlin since 1998. He has had the pleasure of working in Berlin's creative and media scene as well as at Gestalten Publishers for several years. Outside of the office he's a fan of good books and good food.

Booktype 2.0: everything a book can be

Back when the first version of our software was launched it wasn’t even called Booktype! It was tailored to meet the needs of quick and very simple book production via so-called books sprints in which authors and editors created complete books from scratch within a few days. Requirements for PDF output, collaborative work, simple and easy to use application and no additional infrastructure were the main goals of the product development. Since then a lot has changed. Although these requirements are still valid, there’s much more an author or publisher can now expect from the newly released Booktype 2.0.

Following the single source publishing idea, Booktype has become a fun and easy to use complete desktop tool for authors and publishers.

What’s so special about Booktype 2.0?

This long anticipated release features a completely new design and modern user interface that gives authors and editors everything they need for their work. They 2.0 system supports epub2 and epub3 imports as well as heuristic Word (docx) import capability that enable the import of existing manuscripts (including chapter recognition). Booktype 2.0 allows for numerous output formats such as print and screen pdf, epub3, mobi, xHTML and XML. Thanks to the availability of different output formats, books can now easily be “converted” from one medium to another, e.g. from screen to print. Additionally, a new layout can be applied to complete the book with just one click!

Changing a layout of the book is easy, you just need one click

A strong focus was placed on the collaborative aspects of book creation since it is often the case that books are compiled by groups of authors. Because of this, we included a few simple but necessary functionalities like track changes (accept/decline changes) and chapter status that displays the different workflow steps of the editing progress in the table of contents of a book.

Track changes is a simple but necessary functionality

Companies or institutions running their own individual Booktype installations will benefit from extended admin settings that give them control over the platform for user management, privacy settings, etc. The new role management with detailed permission settings for editing, reading and exporting files provides the option of precisely defining the roles needed in a book project, like a specific proofreader role.

Booktype 2.0 has a lot of admin functions available

Highlights of the Booktype 2.0 release

Completely new design and user interface

Heuristic Word import of manuscripts (chapter recognition)

epub3 export (was epub2)

Track changes functionality like in MS Word

Additional changes

Extended admin settings with more control over the platform, user management, privacy settings etc.

Flexible role management with detailed permission settings

Chapter status to signal work progress

Change layout of complete book with one click

Curious to find out how to publish five book formats in under one minute? Watch this new screencast! Interested in trying Booktype? Contact us at contact@booktype.pro to learn how Booktype can help your publishing business. To receive Booktype product information before anyone else, special offers, insider tips and much more, sign up for our mailing list.